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Vice Blog

NEW YORK - DO THEY THINK GUITARS AND MICROPHONES ARE JUST FUCKING TOYS?

"Signature edition" guitars occupy a pretty low rung on the ladder of adult lameness. At least with vinyl toys and superhero comics and the like, the fact that grown men are concerning themselves with things made for kids is more or less out in the open. I mean, even the message-board types who'll spend paragraph upon paragraph debating the craftmanship of new Spawn figures versus old generally have some notion of the manchildren they are in the eyes of the rest of the world and will occasionally crack a joke about the intended age of their pursuit or use the word "collectible" in quotes. Somehow though, guitar nerds think the inherent coolness of their obsession makes them exempt from even this sliver of self-consciousness.

Case in point: This guy, who spent "hundreds of hours" creating an exact replica of Joe Strummer's guitar and is now pissed that Fender has decided to create their own " tribute." Not pissed that he gave up a year of his life making a prop for play-acting his teenage hero when a cheaper and easier solution was right around the corner, but that a corporation would dare commodify his "labor of love." Hi-larious.

Oh, and in case you're concerned about how difficult it'd be to come up with suitable facsimiles of all the crap Joe had pasted on his guitar with the official Fender version, don't worry. They had Shepard Fairey design a sticker page for it.

A fucking sticker page.